Tech football player tests positive for COVID-19

A Louisiana Tech University football player has tested positive for COVID-19 and is self-quarantining.

Tech’s Athletics Department confirmed in a press release sent out Saturday afternoon about the positive COVID-19 test result and said the student-athlete will self-quarantine for the next 14 days.

Bulldog football players began reporting for voluntary conditioning on June 1 with the actual workouts beginning on June 8.

Grambling State University’s football team is not holding conditioning workouts.

Tech isn’t the only college to announce a football player has tested positive for CO-VID-19. Last Wednesday, the University of Texas announced that two Longhorn football players have tested positive for coronavirus last week and a third tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. Then on Friday, the University of Houston announced it is suspending all voluntary workouts for its athletes after six tested positive for COVID-19 with symptoms.

Louisiana Tech’s Athletics Department instituted a number of safety measures at the beginning of Phase 1 of statewide reopening. As part of the department’s protocol, contact tracing procedures were included for the student-athletes. Through those measures, Tech was able to identify additional football student-athletes that could have been exposed, and as a precaution, those additional student-athletes will also be mandated to self-quarantine for the next two weeks.

Arkansas State, Boise State, Iowa State and Oklahoma State are among other college football programs that have admitted to having some athletes test positive for COVID-19.

But the number of schools that have had players test positive for the novel coronavirus remains unclear.

The Associated Press over the weekend reported that nearly half of the 66 Football Bowl Subdivision members that responded to an AP inquiry last week said they were still deciding whether to disclose the number of athletes with positive tests — and a little more than half said they aren’t going to release numbers at all.

Auburn football program recently confirmed three players had tested positive; a few days later, rival Alabama declined to confirm reports that as many as eight were positive, citing privacy laws.